THANK GAWD MARIA

an abcedarian

by Susan Vespoli

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

answered her phone

because I had texted

Can you come help me

do my yard?

every day 

for a week. She and her husband and son are

godsends to me. Saints

hauling clippers and blowers and rakes

in the back of their old red truck,

January to December, this 

kind crew shows up, whistling as they

lop off tree branches,

machete oleanders,

neaten bougainvillea, trim vines

overhanging block walls and dangling car-

port. Prompt responders to my 

queries for ten-plus years – and so, no

response rallied my anxiety,

spurred my dread, amped my

trepidation amidst in-

undation of news reports of

vile ICE squads

whisking away humans. Oh, let them be okay, I

eXclaim to myself over and over—and then they are.

Yes, Maria laughs. Text broke, only voice works on her

zonked phone. This morning they arrive, wave Hola!

Zip their magic.

Susan Vespoli believes in the power of writing to stay sane.

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

by Kelly Fordon

I feel like a shoelace someone keeps stumbling over—stupid, shoddy, unsafe.

 

Outside, it's gray. Of course.

 

Detroit will either come back or it won’t. We were almost there, but now I don't know. On Wednesday, people may be handing out guns on the street corner. 

 

Yay, for the Second Amendment said no one who lived through MSU, Sandy Hook, Vegas, you name it.

 

Of course, many people didn’t live through MSU, Sandy Hook, Vegas, You Name It. 

 

I guess they don’t count.

 

Many people will either count on Wednesday or they won’t. 

 

I am setting up my pop-up outside the pot place—a prime location to take in all the shenanigans while maintaining a bland aspect. 

 

I ate eight cookies yesterday, but later this week, I might best that. 

 

Horrible Encounters with the Monsters in My Life is the name of the film playing 24/7 in the park. 

 

The principals keep rotating. 

 

We will either have patience for the alternating cast on Wednesday or not. 

 

Let’s hope no one shoots the messenger.

 

My Irish ancestors lived in mud huts. Mud floors. I heard they were often lucky if they had one stool—just a log they’d sit on called a creepie.

 

Scooch your creepie up to the fire. 

 

The Irish knew what it was like to live beneath the hand, squashed like so many crumbs and swept away. 

 

Stomped on.

 

Will that be me on Wednesday? 

 

I am watching Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. It was filmed in 1991.

 

I don’t want to go back there. 

 

There is a long list of people I can tolerate today, but maybe not on Wednesday.

 

Please don’t try this at home.

 

My dog will likely sleep through everything.

 

He is only safe because I care.

 

I guess that’s always the case.

Kelly Fordon’s latest short story collection I Have the Answer (Wayne State University Press, 2020) was chosen as a Midwest Book Award Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. Her 2016 Michigan Notable Book Garden for the Blind (WSUP) was an INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist. Her first full-length poetry collection Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press, 2019) was an Eyelands International Prize Finalist and an Eric Hoffer Finalist. It was later adapted into a play by Robin Martin and published in The Kenyon Review Online. Her new poetry collection What Trammels the Heart will be published by SFASUPress in 2025. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks and has received a Best of the Net Award and Pushcart Prize nominations in three different genres. She teaches at Springfed Arts in Detroit and online, where she runs a fiction podcast called Let’s Deconstruct a Story.

BRAVE RED

by Ellen White Rook

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Maggie at The Magical, Magnificent, Miraculous Amaryllis Journey.

on the one-year anniversary of the last time I got dressed up

 

In this country,

there is no minister for loneliness.

We make do with general anxiety.

The wind, loose, plucks

the last pinecones and builds

horizontal crowns across the snow.

After this year of quizzical

breath and fingers pressed 

against glass walls, houseplants 

are overgrown from too much care: 

Ivies overthrow terracotta 

and aloe spikes weave 

through jades.

An amaryllis 

that hasn’t bloomed in years,

this week leapt a green arc from its nest 

of tiny stones. The thumb-bud aims 

precisely where the sun comes up

even though I turn the pot

each morning and some days, 

the sky stays winter pale. 

The red sepals unfold

precisely the shade

of that last lipstick smile.

Ellen White Rook is a poet and teacher of contemplative arts residing in upstate New York and southern Maine. In the pre-COVID-19 world, she offered workshops on Japanese flower arranging and led day-long Sit, Walk, Write retreats that merge meditation, movement, and writing. In 2021, you can find her on Zoom. Although a senior citizen, Ellen is a recent graduate from the Master of Fine Arts program at Lindenwood University. Her work has been published in Montana Mouthful and Trolley Literary Journal.

GRAND PAUSE

by Rick Mullin

I can’t relax when Miles tells the band

to keep it tight. He’ll fire you on stage!

I’ve seen it happen. On the other hand

there’s no alternative. An anxious age

provokes an anxious anthem: Straight ahead!

I can’t get back to normal when the news

is so predictable. The cycle never ends.

I can no longer tolerate my views.

I can’t retrieve the names of several friends.

Remember what the poet Rilke said.

About the truth. About the pile of facts.

I can’t find where he said it, though. Can you?

And here’s another thing: I can’t relax.

On stage, there is no exit interview. 

I keep it tight. The spotlight’s turning red.

Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

ELECTION DEFLECTIONS

by Mary K O’Melveny

It is Election Day. The sun streams down

through emptied branches. Chilled air hovers

like a collective inhale. The exhale 

waits in the wings like a novice actor 

battling stage fright. Last night, wind pretended 

to be a train. We woke up thinking we 

had traveled far away and were waiting 

for good news to arrive at the station 

with morning’s mail. But we were still here 

facing down demons, stomachs tied to the tracks.

 

Last time we were set up at a polling

place in Florida. We wore our election

protection badges and hats, as we hoped 

for business. We were nervous. Little

did we know. Now, fear oozes through our veins

with every news bulletin and text.

The pandemic has kept us at home. Our

absentee ballots were mailed. Making calls

calls to others is as close as we’ve gotten

to a voting booth. We’ve been begging.

 

I turn to the rhythm of raking leaves.

Piles of them shift, rustle, crinkle, whisper.

I am in charge of the rake and the broom.

Most will follow my directions. How great

that feels. Predictability has all

but vanished outside my small radius of

oak, maple, chestnut, dogwood, beech, ash.

Later, I am moved to bake a cobbler.

Comfort food may get us through this long night.

Maybe many nights to come. And Woody Guthrie.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

I CHECK THE POLLS AT 5 AM

by Katherine Smith

I rise in the dark to check the last polls,

then wait for light to shine through

 

gold-green leaves before I lace my shoes.

Courage. The sun is shining on the most beautiful

 

leaf, which is dead, and glowing with light.

Everything is metaphor this morning.

 

Even the wind, even my sanity

even the mangled carcass of a groundhog

 

I skirt on the road, whispering please

don’t let it still be there tomorrow.

 

Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House) appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press) appeared in 2014. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

by Tricia Knoll





We have feasted
so long
on anger

slathered on our bread
heating up our coffee
fried up in lard.

We knew
that angst and anxiety
pickle up that anger.

Fear makes food
taste like sawdust
and worms

until the wellspring
fills, runs clear,
and someone takes

the child’s hand
to offer a clear
and cool sip

and the old song
something can be saved
the game can still be played

sprinkles like rain on what burns
slides like teardrops
pours like love.

Tricia Knoll was for many months in the Bernie Sanders wing of Democratic voters, a loyal Vermonter. She has a voice disability and was deeply moved to hear Brayden Harrington's speech in support of Joe and the selflessness of a man who stops to help a kid with stuttering. She is preparing letters every day for Vote Forward to urge liberal leaning voters to vote.

ODE TO AN OPTIMISTIC FRIEND

by William Aarnes

Image source: The Never-Ending Nightmare That is This Election by Tom Tomorrow

“nasty, brutish, and short” —Hobbes

You tell me to stop
being so pessimistic

so I’m going to start the morning
by ignoring the news

and focus on something random
like cutting my toenails

in hopes that early in the day
someone will see my toes

sticking out of my sandals
and admire my feet,

such lovely, lovely feet,
a compliment so charming

I might stop worrying
about how, despite years

of seeming stability,
it’s conceivable, that—boom!—

by the end of the week
the country’s domestic tranquility

will have collapsed into clashes
in the streets, at times the fighting

among swiftly mustered militias
so intense that the corners

of houses fall in rubble,
nobody bothering to care

who’s caught in the crossfire,
most of us come to grief,
                                                                                             
and I’ll be cowering
(with my lovely toes)

in the plaster-dusted tub
without much hope

of your trying to cheer me up
till—pray we’re among the living—

some well-armed force
imposes peace.


William Aarnes lives in South Carolina.  His latest collection is Do in Dour (Aldrich Press).

ELECTION DAY APPROACHES

by Joan Mazza

Image source: “The Never-Ending Nightmare That is This Election” by Tom Tomorrow

Anxiety is a necklace of barbed wire, ankle bracelets
shackled to a boat filling with water. We know we’re
going down. I wake gasping, unable to tell dream
from reality, my bed a rocking sea. That muffled
sound of a crying cat—locked in a closet? —
an owl on this chilly night. I open the window
to listen, but he hoots only once more. Autumn scents
drift in with the cold, heat vent blowing at my feet.
In bed, fragrance of old dog and woolen blankets,
shadows of barking. This isn’t Mineral or Richmond,
but unnamed rural Central Virginia, oak trees and crows
content in their ignorance of news and election polls,
unable to comprehend the concept of email or fraud.
No, they understand fraud, who cheats and misleads
instead of warning of danger. The crows know who’s
a friend because even birds show their true colors.

Who goes there? No one answers. Silence—
the gift of second sleep. Today, I’ll be part of a panel
of writers talking to those who want to be published
but don’t write. Hopefuls with empty notebooks ask
about agents and fees, not about craft. They could win
the Pulitzer, Booker, and Nobel for their ideas alone.
They’ll be on TV, have their own show. About what,
they don’t know. No one asks, Joan, how can I become
a better writer? What books might be instructive by example?
This trend toward magical thinking will ruin us, as if
the most bombastic white men could offer salvation,
a cure for bad judgment. I whisper, Mon Dieu! although
I don’t believe in any Dieu, not Thor or Zeus
or even Aphrodite. My old dog makes her little cough
that means, Come back to bed, and I do, wearing fleece
and flannel, not barbed wire, my mind still shackled.


Author’s Note: Based on Twenty Little Poetry Projects by Jim Simmerman.


Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Kestrel, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, Slipstream, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

ELECTION ANXIETY

by Susan Vespoli 

Swallow election anxiety
like tea;

feel its ant
hill teem, its nit

specks cling; watch it nix
your calm, axe

your peace, tie
you into a zillion tiny

knots, with no exit
so just breathe into the anxiety.

Susan Vespoli lives in Phoenix, AZ where she works a couple of jobs, writes poetry and prose, which has been published online and in  print. These days she is breathing heavily into election anxiety.